Do You Play Great In Practice and Lose Confidence In Matches?

Welcome to the Tennis Psychology Podcast with your host, Dr. Patrick Cohn. Dr. Cohn is a mental Game of Tennis expert. Do you want to improve your mental toughness for tennis? Then join us on the Tennis Psychology Podcast sessions with Doc.

When you're practicing, do you feel relaxed? And your rallying is very good, but the moment you step onto the court for a match, your game tends to fall apart. Hi, I'm Dr. Patrick Cohn. In today's session, I answer a question about a player who seems to do great in practice but then falls apart in a match. Here's the question from Noah. He says, I always find that when I'm rallying or practicing, I play very well, but the moment the match starts, my game falls apart tremendously. My shots in a match are as if I'm a different person. Even being well aware of the mental game and the absolute importance of a relaxed mindset, I just can't get there, which is to say, at the very least, frustrating. I was wondering, do you know of anything I can take before a match that can put me in a relaxed, autopilot unconscious mode?

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Well, thanks for the question, Noah. And the direct question is, no, I don't recommend taking anything like a pill or like alcohol or anything else that's going to put you in a relaxed unconscious mode. Now, I will say, nutritionally, there, there could be some benefits of reducing your caffeine intake. I know there have been some studies done on caffeine and athletes and how that can increase your level of activation and can throw you over the edge and make you maybe too excited or too amped up. But this is a very common problem. And the number one reason why tennis players contact me to work on the mental game of tennis is they know they're a different person when they go to the court and play matches. It feels different, it looks different, their performance goes downhill. It's just completely different to what they're capable of in a practice setting or rallying with a friend or a partner. And that has to tell you something. That has to tell you you're treating match play different than you're treating practice. For some reason, it becomes more important for you. It becomes more tense, it becomes more stressful. Now, the answers aren't easy here. They don't come to me easy because there's a lot of issues that are wrapped up into why Players don't perform their best in matches or feel like they're a completely different person playing in match than they do in practice. What I mean by that is often there's concepts like fear of failure, fear of embarrassment, social approval, worrying about all the hard work that you put in, going for nothing. So nine times out of 10, I find that it's the problem starts with this fear of failure. Not wanting to embarrass yourself, not wanting to look silly, maybe even not wanting to disappoint a parent with some juniors, or not wanting to let down a coach as well. Now that's not the whole ball of wax, obviously. The other part of that is because you don't want to lose or because you want to win badly, that causes you to tighten up, not trust your game. And then all of a sudden it feels like you're a different person playing. The strokes are a lot tighter, they're not free. You can't hit out on the so the key you talked about a relaxed autopilot unconscious mode. Wouldn't that be great? If I had a pill for that, then I wouldn't need to do mental coaching. So the key though for you is to get into that relaxed state is obviously you got to address the fear of failure. That's really critical. That's the first step. And like I said, the answers are not really easy in that case because they're very individualized. The other part is you have to be able to trust the game you practice when you compete. That means you can't care about missing. You can't care about the ball sailing long, for example. You have to go for it. You have to allow yourself to be in that autopilot unconscious mode. Just look and react. One of the things that happens is tennis players will tend to revert back to their mechanics or what their instructor told them under pressure. That's the wrong way to go. What you want to do is go back to a mindset of freedom, letting it happen, seeing the target and just hitting it there. I know it sounds simple, but that's where you need to get to for this autopilot unconscious mode. Thanks for the question and good luck with your game.

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